


our hearts are too ruthless to break

by evieoh



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: All The Tropes, Alternate Universe, Angst, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Feels, Nikita AU, Smut, and then back to enemies again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-08 03:53:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14096643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evieoh/pseuds/evieoh
Summary: “As far as the world is concerned, Mary Sue Poots is dead."Skye flinched at the name. To her, Mary Sue Poots had been dead for years. It somehow seemed easier to cling to that thought than to process the rest of what he said.“My name is Grant Ward,” he told her, his voice disturbingly even and devoid of inflection. “I work for the government, and we have decided to give you a second chance.”(Skyeward/Nikita AU)





	our hearts are too ruthless to break

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stargazerdaisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stargazerdaisy/gifts).



> Hi all, my previous account was hacked and all my fics deleted, so I am reuploading them all now. This was originally posted in August 2016 as a birthday fic for my amazing beta/best friend Daisy.
> 
> My original note for this fic read: "I realized the other day that this is only the second story I have written since I started writing fic again without constant handholding and editing from you, and I have to say it was an interesting challenge. I've gotten so used to sharing my thoughts with you, and running to you when I get stuck with anything. Basically, I am entirely codependent and I don't think I know how to write on my own anymore. You have ruined me entirely." -- The ensuing year and a half have not made me remotely less dependent on you.
> 
> But I still owe the hugest of thank-yous to Ves, CaptainSummerDay and most especially to Megan for stepping in to fill Daisy's shoes as editor and giving me some much needed notes and cleaning up my grammar and punctuation and ridiculously run on sentences.

 

* * * * *

“Skye?”

He falters at the sight of her, the gun in his hand dropping just a fraction in his shock. It’s the first time she’s ever seen a break in his perfect soldier composure.

( _Lie,_  her traitorous memory informs her.  _His arms around her, his voice breaking in panic, her blood on his hands, his lips on her temple. No robot-Ward then, he was so human in his fear that it made her want to comfort_ him _, even as she felt her fingers turn cold from the blood that was spilling from her body far too fast for him to hold._ )

His reaction to the sight of her leaves him wide open to attack. It’s sloppy; Garrett would reprimand him if he was here. But she supposes coming face to face with a ghost is a good enough excuse to have a momentary lapse. Already he is pulling himself together, raising his arm to aim the gun at her again. There is still a slight tremor in his grip though, and a maelstrom of confusion, anger and longing in his eyes.

She can understand his reaction. After all, she has been dead for three years as far as he knew and now she is standing before him in a dirty alley with a gun aimed at his chest.  _Her_  hands are steady however ( _just like he trained her_ ) and her face impassive. She’s been waiting for this day for a long time now. She knew it was coming. ( _Every part of her that is shaking a the sight of him is carefully contained._ )

Shifting her aim minutely at the last second before she fires, she hits him in the left shoulder. It’s a little more than a flesh wound, but he should recover quickly. It’s probably the shock that a dead girl just shot him (that  _she_  shot him) that causes him to drop though, more so than actual pain. Whatever the cause of his falter, it’s enough for her to walk over and to kick the gun from his right hand sending it skittering across the ground. She knows that was too easy, there is no fight in him or else she wouldn’t have stood a chance at disarming him like that. Clearly the sight of her has affected him even more strongly than she imagined.

Leaning in close though, the scent of him still sends a shiver of longing through her. His reaction is not the only one she underestimated. Working hard to keep her voice steady, she recites the line she has practiced so many times in her head now that the words roll off her tongue with a bitter sense of satisfaction.

“Tell Garrett I’m coming for him.”

 

* * * * *

_Six Years Ago_

She woke in an unfamiliar room. The walls looked like solid concrete, like some kind of bomb shelter. The harsh lights in the ceiling made her eyes burn. It took a few seconds for her vision to clear, her head swimming as she turned too fast. There was a chill in the room that settled in her bones. The mattress she was laying on was thin enough that she could feel the metal frame of the narrow cot right through it. It felt sterile and institutional and somehow familiar despite being completely foreign. It took her a long moment to remember where she was when she went to sleep, but when she did it all came rushing back at once -  _the judge, the sentencing, the cell, the guards_ , and she jerked upright with a harsh breath, looking around in a panic.

This was not where she went to sleep.

 _What happened_ , she racked her brain, her thoughts still moving too slow. It felt like there was too much pressure in her skull.

_There was a man in her cell. A needle in her arm. Voices shouting. The world tilting._

As she cast her panicked thoughts and tried to catch a solid path as to how she got here, she finally noticed the man sitting in the solitary chair in the room. He watched her impassively, looking almost annoyed as she worked her way through the fog of her memory.

“Where am I?” she meant to shout the question at him, but her throat felt harsh and raw so it came out as a hoarse whisper instead.

“Well,” he began. “For starters you’re not in prison anymore; you’re welcome for that by the way.”

His tone was so dry she wasn’t sure if he was joking or dead serious.

“Officially, your death was ruled a suicide. Your ashes are stored here,” he told her, his face still completely devoid of any emotion as he dropped a folder on her lap. She looked down and saw a photo of herself, her mugshot attached to prison paperwork, as well as a photo of a utilitarian wall of plaques. She stared at the picture until it blurred, but she still couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. Nothing about any of this made any sense at all. She looked up to ask him what the hell was going on, but he cut her off before she could even open her mouth.

“As far as the world is concerned, Mary Sue Poots is dead.”

Skye flinched at the name. To her, Mary Sue Poots had been dead for years. It somehow seemed easier to cling to that thought than to process the rest of what he said.

“My name is Grant Ward,” he told her, his voice disturbingly even and devoid of inflection. “I work for the government, and we have decided to give you a second chance.”

“Why?” she asked, reeling and feeling five steps behind everything that has happened since she opened her eyes.

“You have displayed a specialized skill set that we have a use for. Hopefully you’ll be willing to use it to stay  _out_  of prison instead of getting  _into_  it this time. And you fit the profile we look for - young, attractive, no family, no real ties to anyone or a real paper trail. It’s a rarity these days.” His face actually had a trace of feeling in it now, some kind of sympathy or empathy pushing through at the edges that only makes the sharp ache inside her at his words sting even worse. “Your life is over, and I’m here to offer you a new one. But you have to be willing to earn it.”

“How?” her voice cracked. She felt overwhelmed and terrified but somehow curious despite the absurdity of the situation.

“By serving your country. We will train you, teach you everything you need to know, make you a part of something bigger than yourself.”

She didn’t feel capable of doing anything other than stare at him dumbly as he walked towards the door, any of her usual quips or snarky comments were left somewhere behind in the girl that died in a prison cell. He didn’t seem to expect an actual answer or agreement from her though, and she supposed it wasn’t as though they needed one from her - they had already shown they could get whatever they wanted. It wasn’t exactly like she had any other option but to do whatever they wanted her to.

He glanced back at her over his shoulder once more before he walked through the door. “Welcome to Division.”

 

* * * * *

In the months after that first confrontation with Ward in the alley, Skye made her presence known in a big way. She had already interfered with a few missions before that, enough for Garrett to label her the enemy and put a shoot to kill order out on her. But now she is everywhere; she takes out their sources, she tampers with their financial supplies, ruins their missions. She can practically feel the frustration coming from Garrett even as she sits in her safehouse miles away from him and she smirks in satisfaction. She has Fitz and Simmons on the inside, so seemingly blindly loyal and above suspicion that no one would ever think twice that they might be undermining the organization from its very foundation. They have figured out a way for them to get messages to her on a hidden network, so she knows every move Garrett and Division make before they make it.

Trip was worried about her starting it on her own, but he had important leads to follow up on in South America and after three years she isn’t waiting any longer to exact her revenge,  _their_  revenge. Garrett had destroyed so many lives and they were going to make him pay for his sins.

 _‘... make you a part of something bigger than yourself.’_  He’d neglected to mention that it would involve turning her into a trained assassin. That she would lose everything she thought she knew about herself, and learn so much more that she wishes she never had. They made her into something lethal, a weapon for them to aim and shoot, and she had loved them for it. They were the closest thing to a real family she ever had. And then they tried to kill her. Because she broke the rules. Because she threatened to take away something that Garrett didn’t want to lose. Because she was a  _weakness_.

In the three years she has been gone, she has been slowly building up a network of support. First Trip, after rescuing him from the hole Division left him in. Then Simmons and Fitz, it wasn’t exactly hard to turn them against Garrett once she revealed what he had tried to do to her. She has found arms suppliers, money sources, informants. It turns out there are quite a few people Garrett has screwed over who are more than happy to help her in one way or another in her mission even if they aren’t willing to go after the man themselves.

Trip keeps telling her that she needs more in her life than this driven focus on Division, on Garrett. Skye knows he’s right. She’s still sleeping on a narrow cot in an almost empty room, as though she is still a recruit. She still can’t bring herself to wear bright colors unless it’s for a cover. She still can’t sleep with all the lights out.

It’s been three years, but she is still stuck in that place, unable to move on. So she tells herself she needs to bury it, bury him, before she can have any kind of closure.

 

* * * * *

_Six Years Ago_

Ward was in charge of the recruits. He oversaw their training, gauged their skill level, and generally made their lives hell.

It was like a military charm school. They taught her how to hone her hacking skills even further. How to shoot a moving target at range. How to assemble a weapon blindfolded. How to pass for a high class escort or a Fortune 500 CEO. How to disarm a bomb in under thirty seconds. How to seduce a man or kill him with her bare hands.

While hacking was her talent, her physical training was more than a few steps behind most of the others. So she could understand the dirty looks thrown her way when she was chosen to take part in a mission after only being there for a month. There were recruits who had been there almost a year and hadn’t been out of the base in all that time.

Her part was supposed to be simple; she was just there to play the honey trap and lure the unsuspecting target out of the hotel bar. But things went sideways somewhere between the bar and the hotel room where the team was waiting and somehow there was a gun to her head and security goons shouting at her with thick Russian accents while the target had his hands around her throat. She was desperately wishing she had paid more attention the day Ward showed the recruits how to disarm someone. She repeated the moves as well as she could remember them, and got target’s gun in her hands, but his bodyguards now both have their weapons aimed at her.

Suddenly, just as she felt the panic in her bones, Ward was there. He moved so fast she can barely keep up. It’s almost like she blinked and both bodyguards were on the ground, unconscious, or dead. At that point the way they had smirked as they pointed their weapons at her was still fresh enough that she wasn’t totally sure she minded which fate had befallen them. Ward had the main target down and restrained before he even had a chance to react. He called to the other Division agents on his comms unit and then turned to face her, breathing hard as he checked her over for injuries. “You ok?”

There was something in his tone that made the last fragile piece that was holding her together disintegrate. All she could do was nod as she clutched the front of his shirt like he was the only thing holding her upright. His hands came up tentatively to cup her elbows like he wanted to comfort her but it was a completely unfamiliar concept to him.

“You’re fine,” he told her, his no-nonsense tone the most soothing thing she could have imagined in that moment. “You did good, okay?”

He held her gaze until she nodded back at him. He squeezed her arms one last time before he pulled away to bark out a series of orders at the rest of the agents that appeared in the hallway. Then his hand curved around her wrist as he led her away from the scene. She tried hard not to focus on how reassuring and solid his touch felt.

After that, the other recruits still gave her filthy looks, but for an entirely new reason now. She heard the whispers as she walked past, and saw the way their eyes rolled whenever she and Ward were in close proximity.

She couldn’t deny that he actually seemed to take a personal interest in her training after that disastrous mission; something had changed. After having come face to face with the worst case scenario of what could happen when things go wrong in the field, Skye threw herself into her training and becoming the best agent she could. This seemed to earn Ward’s respect. But nothing ever happened between them.

He taught her everything she needed to know to never be caught off guard like that again. How to defend herself against three men twice her size. How to fight back. How to be a lethal foe. Somewhere along the way he actually became her friend, someone she could tell about her life and what it was like for her growing up. And slowly, over time, he began to do the same. ( _When she asked him how he ended up in Division though, all he would tell her was that Garrett pulled him out of a hell and made him the man he became. “I owe him everything.”_ )

Neither of them had escaped their childhoods unscarred, but for the first time Skye didn’t feel so alone. For the first time she had someone who understood.

When the day came for her ‘graduation,’ her first kill mission after training for a year, Ward was the one who came to her room to tell her. To prepare her. He was the one who looked at her like he wished he was sending her anywhere else other than where he was. He gave her the mission overview, the info on the target, showed her where to jab the needle. He promised he would be on-site, ready to back her up at a moment’s notice if she needed him.

This time, the mission went off without a hitch. Something about knowing he was watching over her made her feel safer. She tried diligently to ignore that feeling though, because she knew there was no chance of it ending anywhere good for her.

 

* * * * *

The next time she sees Ward face to face is at some charity event that is really an excuse for the who’s who of various agencies to rub shoulders with Senators and D.C powerhouses to try and beg, bribe, or blackmail their way into getting more funding. Skye hacked into the escort service for Senator Pierce, Garrett’s main benefactor, and managed to get herself lined up as his date for the evening.

She spots Ward not long after she enters the ballroom with Senator Pierce. After spending a respectable amount of time schmoozing with the Senator she makes an excuse and heads towards the bar alone, surveying the crowd as surreptitiously as she can to make sure she isn’t blindsided by Garrett or any other Division agents along the way.

“Hey Ward,” she greets casually as she leans on the bar beside him, waving the bartender over and ordering herself a drink.

He stiffens at the sound of her voice, but otherwise doesn’t react.

“What are you doing here, Skye?” he asks, still not looking at her, his expression unreadable.

“You keep up that tone and I might think you aren’t glad to see me,” Skye smirks, before directing Ward’s attention to the Senator as she waves at him across the room. “I’m here on a date.”

Finally he turns to face her fully and she almost wishes he hadn’t. It was so much easier to imagine dealing with him when he was just an abstract idea. Being near enough to know that he still smells exactly the same as he did all those years ago is something else entirely. She can’t deny that something inside her still flickers and aches at the way his eyes drink her in. It is tearing away still tender scar tissue and leaving all of her nerves exposed with a simple look.

There is a heavy silence between them, long enough for it to settle into something close to uncomfortable before he turns away from her. Slipping back into his professional demeanor, he scans the room, a tinge of irritation entering his tone as he speaks. “So what is it? You’re here trying to get Division’s funding cut off? You really want to be responsible for that?”

“Oh come on Ward,” she scoffs at him. “Please don’t tell me that your head is so far in the sand that you’re actually pretending he’s still the good guy, fighting for his country’s safety. Look at the jobs he’s taking these days. He’s just a mercenary for hire. Can you seriously buy that he has any other loftier goals than serving his own purposes?”

Ward sighs as he shakes his head. “There is so much more going on here than you understand, Skye.”

“You know the only reason the government hasn’t shut him down is because he is holding twenty years of dirty secrets over their heads,” she snaps back at him.

“And what?” he asks her, with that same look of exasperation that she recalls so well from her rookie days. “You’re just going to take him down and let all those secrets out without giving a damn about the fallout? You think the world can actually  _handle_  that? I thought you’d actually learned something after your days with the Rising Tide.”

Ignoring his dig, and the instinctive reaction he brings out in her to respond just like the have all those years ago, she shakes her head. “You’re still loyal to him. After everything he’s done, to me, to you, to everyone. All of his lies. You think what happened to Trip was an accident? What about Kara? How can you still stand beside him?”

His face shutters into carefully practiced blankness as she hisses her words. Her bitterness seeping through her tightly held control and she draws on every reserve she has to maintain her calm outward demeanor. “There has to be a way to bring him down without those secrets getting out. And I’m going to find it.”

With that she downs the last of her drink before turning away from him and walking directly into John Garrett.

“Well hey there, Princess,” he greets her, his cheerful smile at odds with the coldness in his eyes. His hands are on her elbows, under the guise of steadying her, but their iron grip belies his purpose. “I was wondering when we might run into you.”

Skye works hard to tamp the burst of anxiety that shoots through her at his proximity even after all this time. His mere presence brings her fury at him roaring back to the forefront. She takes a deep breath to calm her rapidly beating pulse, schooling her features into practiced blankness before looking him dead in the eye.

“Well, I’d hate to disappoint you,” she smiles at him through gritted teeth, her eyes like daggers. She tugs her arms from his grip as she steps back. His hold tightens for just a second before he releases her, the threat heavy in his actions.

Skye turns back to the bartender and waves for another drink. She uses the moment to pull herself together before turning back to face Garrett and Ward, who is clearly struggling to rein his emotions in.  _Right_ , she thinks to herself caustically.  _Can’t show any_  weakness  _in front of your master._

“So, Skye,” Garrett continues, his voice still disturbingly jocular. “How have you been? It’s been what, three whole years now? You know, we mourned you like a family when we thought we lost you.”

He leans in close, ignoring Skye’s shudder of revulsion as he murmurs conspiratorially. “I think it hit Ward here the hardest. Poor boy really was sweet on you.”

Skye’s eyes dart to Ward before she can stop herself. His gaze is turned steadily away from her, his jaw clenched and his eyes hard. She can’t tell if his refusal to react is for her sake or Garrett’s. She doesn’t give Garrett the satisfaction of responding, instead picking up her drink and taking a sip as she glances casually around the room.

“So what’s the play here, sweetheart?” he asks her, his voice losing some of its geniality. “You just wanna show the big boys how close you can get?”

“No,” she replies, turning back to face him again. “I wanna show you how close I can get to  _you_ , to the source of your money. How easily I can take things away from you.”

Garrett’s eyes flick between her and Ward, his expression darkening before he grips her elbow tightly again as his voice lowers menacingly. “You really think you’re even going to walk out of here alive? You don’t think we have guards on all the exits? Come on, Skye, we trained you better than that.”

“Turns out I learned a few things after I left you,” Skye spits back at him as she twists out of his hold. Just as she is free from his hold, she before triggers the explosives she set in the empty ballroom next door, sending the entire place into chaos as terrified guests crowd the exits. Smoke and confused shouts fill the air, people run blindly. Skye takes advantage of the cover and ducks out of sight, blending into the crowd as she makes her way to an exit.

_She ignores how hard her heart is pounding, and she refuses to look back._

 

* * * * *

_Five Years Ago_

In the days following her ‘graduation’, Skye’s emotions ran the gamut between horror, confusion, and a small amount of pride. All those months of training, all her life of never being good enough, and she completed her mission perfectly. Garrett had been practically effusive on her return to the base. While Ward’s reaction was more subdued, she could easily see the pride in his eyes.

( _She focused on the memory of him when the sight of her target’s lifeless eyes tear her from deep sleep._ )

Her target was a bad man. He trafficked girls, children. He was a predator and the world was a better place without him in it. That’s what she would tell herself as she counted her breaths, trying to slow her heart rate back to normal as she lay in the dark after her nightmares woke her.

And somehow it worked. It got easier to sleep, easier to breath, easier to tell herself she had done good.

Two weeks later, Garrett called her into the briefing room for her first official mission. It was a two man op taking out the US money man for an arms dealer. It had to be done cleanly, with no trace of foul play. They were supposed to get close to the target at the lavish charity event he was hosting in his New York penthouse. He was known to have a certain taste for couples, accordingly, they were to pose as jetsetting newlyweds. As soon as the mission directive was out of Garrett’s mouth, Skye knew who her partner was going to be even before she saw Ward straighten from his position against the wall.

 _It’s fine_ , she told herself.  _It’s a job - one you’ve been training for an entire year for. If it involves making out with Ward, you can suck it up and deal with it like a professional._

(Ward didn’t seem to find her smirking to herself all that professional. He then spent the next ten minutes as they walked through the labyrinthine hallways of Division lecturing her on the need for her to be able to control her reactions and cover in the field.)

Hours later the two of them were strolling through the lavish party, surrounded by millionaires, celebutantes, and international arms dealers. Skye knew that the adrenaline high she was riding on would probably be frowned upon by Ward but she couldn’t help it. Somehow she went from being a little unwanted orphan to being a government operative in a $2,000 dress.

It was only the third time she had been above ground in a year, so she figured her excitement at the view from the target’s incredible penthouse apartment would be understood. It was not.

“This is a mission, not a sightseeing adventure,” Ward’s voice hissed in her ear as his arm tightened around her shoulders under the guise of a loving husband.

Skye slid her arm around his waist and somehow resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she smiled up at him, saccharine sweet. “Oh honey, you know nothing looks as good to me as you.”

His lips twitched before he managed to school his features back under his strict control. She took it as a win anyway.

The two of them became masters of small talk as they wove their way through the party. However, as time went, by Skye slowly began to notice the way that Ward seemed to almost go out of his way not to touch her. Considering their mission required the target to notice the two of them, and particularly their passion for each other, it seemed a little counter-intuitive. She finally dragged him to the edge of the dancefloor closest to where their target was sitting, her frustration getting the better of her.

“We’re supposed to get his attention, right?” she asked, her hands sliding up his chest to twine around his neck. His entire body stiffened at the contact and Skye finally rolled her eyes as she leaned up and brushed her lips against his cheek to cover her whisper. “You know we’re supposed to be newlyweds, Robot? Weren’t you the one just lecturing me about selling my cover?”

She felt his chest expand against her as he inhaled deeply before turning his face towards her. Her breath caught as she was suddenly aware of just how close they were, and just how dark his eyes looked. Her pulse jumped and she suddenly wasn’t sure anymore of where the line was between reality and cover as his hands slid down her back to rest just below her hips as they swayed to the music. Was he just doing as she’d said and finally getting into their cover, or was he feeling this strange and sudden heat between them that flooded her awareness? As he moved her effortlessly around the dance floor, his gaze never left hers, never gave her a moment of relief to catch her thoughts. His eyes dipped down to her lips and she felt her breath catch at the heat in his gaze, pushing her body almost imperceptibly closer against his as she waited for the brush of his lips on hers.

Then one of Hunt’s men was at her elbow, inviting the two of them to join Mr. Hunt for a private drink, and the spell was broken.

Everything went off without a hitch. Skye charmed the target while Ward slipped the toxin into his glass, cool as ice even as Hunt’s hand slid up his thigh. Skye feigned a headache before things went too much further and they left despite Hunt’s protests, promising to return the next time they were in the city.

Hunt died several hours later in his sleep and it appeared to all concerned to be nothing more than a heart attack, Garrett informed them with a satisfied grin when they returned to headquarters.

But later, as she lay in her room and tried to sleep, all Skye could think of was the look in Ward’s eyes as he held her body close on the dancefloor.

 

* * * * *

Almost a month after Skye's run in with Ward and Garrett, Simmons gets a message to her through their shell program, hidden in Division’s network: Garrett is actually leaving the base. Apparently there is an asset high profile enough to drag him from the protective confines of Division. Ivan Valiyev, a former nuclear physicist from the Eastern Bloc who had stolen and hidden away enough enriched Uranium upon his defection to make him a very valuable asset to Garrett. It also makes him a target for at least three other groups who want to know where he hid the Uranium. That’s what Skye discovers after a cursory search and it’s enough for her to know that he’s someone she needs to take out. Garrett, or any of the other shady people who are after this guy, getting their hands on nuclear material is one of most dangerous things she can imagine.

Skye is perched with her sniper rifle resting on the window ledge in the apartment building across from the safehouse, waiting. The Division security team emerges first, followed by Garrett and Valiyev. As she lines up her scope she holds her sight on Garrett for a moment. The urge to take him out is strong, even knowing the fallout that would occur if she did it now. Breathing deeply she forces herself to move her aim off him, take stock of the situation.

Ward is right behind them, his gun drawn, scanning the surrounding area for potential threats. He doesn’t look up to the fifth floor window she is perched in. It’s probably a good thing, considering the group of armed men coming at them.

Ward takes out three, the Division guards get another two, but none of them seem to be aware of the final gunman, lurking back with his weapon aimed at Ward. Skye can feel her pulse spike at the sight. She looks through the scope of her rifle at Garrett and the scientist one last time, her finger twitching against the trigger guard in frustration before she turns her aim on the gunman and fires. Ward flinches as the bullet passes by him, knocking out the man he is fighting with one final blow before turning to stare in shock at the body on the ground behind him. There is a neat hole in his forehead and his weapon still gripped in his hand.

He looks up, scanning the windows until he finds her. She lingers a moment longer than she should. Enough time for him to call out her location, to line up a shot, to move to block her exit. But he does nothing, just stares up at her.

Eventually she flinches away, turns her sights quickly back to the scientist, ducking back to safety of the building behind him but she shoots before he can make it.  _Target down._  Barely. It was pure luck she managed to get him at all with her distraction. A second longer and he would have made it out of her sights and Garrett would have had access to Nuclear materials and it would have been  _her_  fault.

She ignores the way her hands shake as she disassembles her weapon. It should have been so easy for her to complete her kill, to let whatever would happen to Ward just happen. She has a goal, a mission. It is the only thing her life has revolved around for three years now. The only thing she has left. And now in these crucial moments, she is apparently willing to risk it all in order to save Grant Ward.

 _My weakness_ , she thinks to herself bitterly as she acknowledges the twisted sense of humor the universe seems to have when it comes to the two of them.

 

* * * * *

_Three Years Ago_

It was a standard intel gathering op. That was what she thought going in.

But something went wrong. It took her so long to figure it out, because she had been so careful, been so good. She had been going out on missions for a little over a year now, was the rising star of Division. Garrett loved her, and Ward...sometimes she thought maybe Ward loved her too. Something in the way he looked at her when they were alone, like she was the only real thing. ( _He was the only real thing to her._ ) Officially, Division had a very strict policy against fraternization. It happened anyway, frequently. But something always seemed to hold Ward back from making a move, from responding to any of hers. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, she could see that much. But all she ever manages to eventually get out of him is that Garrett can’t have him distracted, that he can’t have a  _weakness._

She was sent in, undercover, to infiltrate the billionaire philanthropist (and occasional international arms dealer) Ian Quinn. To gather intel on his less than savory contacts and deals. The ones that didn’t get mentioned in his profile in Time magazine.

Everything went so well, until it didn’t. Somehow, some way, Quinn found out who she really was and what she was doing there. The two of them were in the wine cellar and he had a gun aimed at her stomach and an utterly incongruous look of regret in his eyes.

She somehow believed that she could still talk her way out of the situation right up until the moment she heard the gun go off.

It felt like being winded, like being hit harder than she ever had been before. She always imagined that being shot would hurt more than that, would feel more like  _getting shot_. But then she felt the blood spilling out and down her dress, staining her hands when she pressed them against herself.

“I’m sorry,” Quinn whispered as he held her close in some perversion of a lovers embrace, before firing again. His arms were so gentle as he lowered her to the ground. She stared at him, disbelieving as the cold spread through her limbs and everything inside her burned. He looked so genuinely regretful and her brain couldn’t make sense of it. He shot her.  _He shot her._  So why was he apologizing?

He started to stand and walk away. She reached out to grab him but her hand fell short. Her limbs felt heavy and clumsy. “Wait,” she tried to say, but it came out a choked whisper and she could taste copper on her tongue.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, turning back to look at her. “It wasn’t up to me.”

And then he was gone. And she was left alone to ponder his incomprehensible statement as the blood continued to spread across her dress like some grotesque bloom.

The thick stone walls of the wine cellar blocked her comms unit. He must have planned for that. Her train of thought seemed scattered, anything to distract herself from the fact that she was laying on the cold hard ground in a growing pool of her own blood, a steep flight of stairs and a house full of hostiles between her and anything resembling help.

She began to drag herself across the room anyway, even knowing there was no way she could get herself up the stairs. There was no way she could just lie there and let go. She had to fight. She had to do something.

Her own heartbeat thudded so loud in her ears she could barely hear anything else. But distantly she thought could hear the sound of gunfire, of shouting voices and furniture crashing. She wasn’t sure if it was even real. If she was just so desperate for someone to rescue her that her brain was conjuring up this illusion to give her some kind of comfort in her final moments. Two more feet to the door. It felt like two miles. The shock was beginning to wear off and the pain was swiftly taking it’s place, a searing agony that made her cry out as she reached her arm out to grab ahold of the door.

And then it was swinging open in front of her, heavy booted feet rushing towards her, a voice raised in fear and anger.  _Ward._  She still wasn’t sure if he was real or imagined, but either way she was glad.

_If she was going to die in anyone’s arms, she would have chosen his._

But then his hands were on her face, pulling her eyes open as he shouted something at her. She could barely hear him through the buzzing that filled her ears, but she nodded anyway. He turned away from her then, shouting at someone she couldn’t see as his hands pressed against her wounds. And then she was being lifted, his arms holding her secure as his lips pressed against her temple. She could feel them moving but she could barely make out anything he was saying as he began to climb the stairs. The only word she caught was  _please._

 

* * * * *

He finds her safe house. She kind of always knew he would. Maybe that’s why she has stayed here long past the point of it being reasonable, of it being  _safe_. Maybe she has been waiting for him.

Whatever it is, there is no feeling of surprise when she walks in and finds him sitting in the single chair in the almost completely bare warehouse. He has a gun in his hand but it isn’t aimed at her, not yet anyway. The two of them face each other in silence for a long moment, the tension in the air palpable. She is the one that breaks the standoff, sighing as she half turns away from him and slips her jacket off her shoulders and throws it toward the rack holding her minimal wardrobe.

“What are you doing here, Ward?” She’s too tired to be defensive. Her day has been going from bad to worse since she woke up, it seems only fitting to top it off with finding him here.

As he gets a look at the rapidly swelling bruise marring the right side of her face his entire posture changes however, and he’s by her side in a second. He reaches out to lightly brush against the tender flesh, before dropping his hand after she flinches away from him.

“What happened?” he asks her, his voice low in anger.

“Oh, you know,” she replies flippantly. “Just your average run-in with an informant who decided he can get more money turning me in than selling me intel.”

“Who?”

Skye snorts disbelievingly as she stares back at him. Everything about his tone and posture remind her of that protective training officer. As though everything about that wasn’t a lie.

“Like you care, Ward,” she brushes him off as brushes past him. “You can drop the act, it’s not like you aren’t here just to try and take me back to Garrett anyhow.”

“Don’t,” he tells her darkly. “You know that it was real, with us. That doesn’t go away.”

“What was  _real_ ,” she sneers at him. “Were the bullets in my gut. What was  _real_  was that I would have been killed one way or another if I had stayed, and you would have just stood by while it happened.”

“No,” he tells her, stepping close, crowding her. “You never even gave me the chance. You left. You knew...you knew what I felt and you let me think you were dead,” there is anger there now, but it is tinged with a kind of hysteria that she never expected to see in him. “You could have told me what you were planning.”

“Told you?” she scoffs. “You would have run straight back to Garrett like the good little soldier boy you are and told him everything and I would have been sent straight to the basement.”

He physically recoils at words, has the gall to look offended at her accusation. “How could you think that? How could you believe that I would have done that to you?”

“He tried to have me killed!” she throws the words at him like a fist, hating the tears that sting her eyes for the weakness they betray. “Did you know that? Did you know that it was his order while you tried to hold those bullet wounds closed?”

There is something so lost in his eyes that it makes her falter. He looks so  _fragile_ , like one more word from her could cause him to shatter completely. He looks nothing like the Ward she knew, and it is almost terrifying to see him so undone.

“I didn’t know,” he finally whispers, his hands reaching for her uselessly before falling back to his sides. “I swear I didn’t know it was him. Not until now, not until you came back.”

“You didn’t  _want_  to know,” she glares at him, stepping back out of his reach.

 

* * * * *

_Three Years Ago_

The voices pulled her from the depths of unconsciousness. Harsh with anger and something darker underlying it all. The cold lights of the medical bay burned her eyes when she tries to open them. A dull ache that throbbed in her entire body under the thin layer of numbness from the drugs keeping her sedated.

“-Just had to go in there all cowboy and now you’ve fucked the entire mission.”

Garrett. From somewhere outside her line of sight, maybe just outside the door. He sounded more pissed than she’d ever heard him before. There was a thud, like someone’s back hitting the wall.

“He shot her! I think the mission was already pretty clearly fucked,” Ward snapped. It was the only time she’d ever heard him talk back to Garrett. That alone was enough to catch her attention even as the drugs threatened to take her under again. She couldn’t see his face but she could hear the anger in his tone.

“He had no idea who she was working for,” Garrett replied dismissively. “The intel she gathered was still usable. Now it’s all shot to hell and she probably won’t even make it anyway.”

A long beat passed before she heard his voice again, lower this time, something in his tone sounding almost threatening. “I told you not to get attached, I warned you what would happen if you let yourself give in to that weakness of yours.”

There was something about those last soft words that that chilled her. Something that pulled at the strings of her memory, but the drugs were tugging her back into the depths before she could catch it.

When she woke next Garrett was there, all relieved smiles and congratulations, but she couldn’t forget that coldness in his voice, that quiet threat. Couldn’t ignore the hardness behind his eyes when he looked at her.

Ward stayed close during her recovery, the threat of almost losing her seeming to have dropped the last of his walls against her. But she could see the hint of guilt behind his eyes, the way he closed off whenever Garrett was around. She could see the way Garrett watched them with his own calculating glare, and she knew she that nothing here was right.

And so she went digging, and she found exactly what she feared. Her mission to investigate Quinn was a sham. He had been feeding Garrett intel for years. There was no reason for her to have been there...unless she had been sent there for exactly what had happened.

( _Quinn’s voice in her ear as he laid her down so gently. “It wasn’t up to me.”_ )

A part of her wanted to reject the idea that Garrett had anything to do with her almost death, let alone ordered it. But another part of her chided herself for being so naive. It’s not like it would have been the first time something like that had happened.

Kara Palamas wasn’t an agent who Skye knew well, but she definitely respected the other woman, had trusted her to have her back the one time they had worked together.

She never exactly what the other agent did wrong, but one day a few months before Skye was shot Kara had been brought back in after a long term undercover op, escorted through Division with a guard on each arm and taken down to Bakshi in the basement.

She came back, but she definitely didn’t come back the same.

Skye didn’t know what they had done to her, but it was clearly nothing good. Kara was promoted to Cleaner after that, removing any trace of Division’s activities from record and taking out anyone a recruit might have gotten too close to while undercover. Anything that might threaten the future of Division.

Their paths crossed rarely, but the hollow blankness in her face and the complete lack of recognition as she looked at Skye on the few occasions that they did was enough to chill her to her bones.

And then there was Trip. Caught behind enemy lines and disavowed. Garrett’s official line was that Trip ‘bravely sacrificed for his country’, but no firewall was ever closed to Skye and she found the official reports. They knew exactly where Trip was being held. Division had sold him out to earn an ally, and they were leaving him there to rot.

There were others too. Skye knew there had to be. And the deeper she looked into it, the more she knew that she needed to run. If she stayed there would be another ‘accident’, or a trip to the basement. Garrett would get rid of her any way he could. Especially now. She could see it in his eyes, her actions did not go unnoticed. She was only painting a bigger target on herself each day she stayed.

The idea of leaving Ward behind, of letting him believe she was gone, cut deep. But then she saw the way he looked to Garrett, remembered the way he’d told her  _“I owe him everything”_ , and she knew she couldn’t count on him to save her. She had to save herself.

So as soon as she was cleared for the field again she volunteered for a mission over Ward’s objections.

( _“It’s a suicide mission,” he had insisted as he begged her to change her mind. She pulled him into one of the few corners out of view of the security cameras and kissed him, rushed and desperate in a way that seemed so perfect for them, a frantic embrace, one small moment to forget about the real world, and only she knew it was a goodbye._ )

Everything went just as she planned. The blocked roads, The ambush at the bridge. She was halfway across the narrow suspension bridge when the gunfire began. The squibs inside her shirt played their part perfectly and she hit the bridge hard before rolling over the edge, knowing her partner would report everything he saw.

The fall seemed to take forever and the water felt like rock when she finally hit it, knocking the wind out of her as she sank into the freezing depths.

_It was his face she saw in her mind as she swam toward the light, the look in his eyes after they kissed. Like she was the only real thing he had ever known._

 

* * * * *

“Do you know why he had Quinn shoot me?” she asks him, her words soft but her tone spiked with venom. Ward shakes his head, though she’s unsure if he is admitting his ignorance or trying to stop her words. His eyes are pleading with her but she twists the knife anyway.

“He did it to punish you. Because you got too close, because I was a  _weakness_ ,” she takes a step closer as she speaks, a sick kind of satisfaction filling her veins at the way he flinches at her words. Her voice lowers, the accusation heavy in her tone. “I took two in the gut to keep you in line, and it worked.”

“Stop.” His voice is harsh, aiming for commanding but falling somewhere short as it breaks a little at the end. He is breathing hard, hunched in on himself almost protectively as though it will keep the truth from hurting him. She takes another step toward him and he raises a hand in front of him, like he’s trying to ward her off, as though he needs some kind of protection from  _her_. As though he didn’t come here armed, as though there isn’t a gun still hanging from his other hand.

“It’s the truth,” She snaps. Her voice has lost it’s measured calm now, her teeth clenched against the bitter rage that is pouring through her. He rocks away from her like her words are a physical blow, but she feels no satisfaction from it. She wants to tear the flesh from his bones, wants to leave him as destroyed as she has felt.

“So,” she says, her voice carefully even again. She steps closer still until her the toes of her shoes hit his and her hand shoots out and grabs ahold of the gun in his hand, but instead of disarming him she pulls it against her stomach with his fingers still wrapped around the grip, so the barrel rests against the scars that still mar her skin. “Are you going to finish the job this time? Is that why you’re here, Ward?”

His fingers release the weapon like it’s burned him, stepping back from her with a horrified look on his face as though she has done the same and leaving her standing alone and holding a loaded gun on herself.

Somehow in her reckless need to push him to the edge, she slid over it as well and now she is free falling and her bitter rage is not quite the safety net she imagined it would be. For three years she has let her anger and desire for vengeance to keep her warm, to keep her moving forward. At this point she isn’t really sure who she is beyond that. For so long she didn’t see a problem with that. But here, now, standing in this room with him and the gun, it’s like she’s seeing herself as a stranger. There is a strangely surreal quality to the moment as she stares down at the gun where it is still pressed against her, her fingers still wrapped around the barrel, digging it into her skin. She can almost feel the bullets as they hit, the memory morphing into phantom pain and she feels her body jerk in response.

Then his fingers are closing over hers again, and for the briefest second she isn’t sure what he is going to do.

But he simply eases her fingers from the gun and tosses it aside. She hears the clatter as it hits the floor, but her attention is caught by the way his eyes are burning so intensely into hers. The look in them is still so broken, but there is something else in there now too, something so familiar that it hurts. She can feel the stinging burn of tears behind her eyes, but she refuses to let them fall. He must see something soften in her expression though, because his hand is tentatively reaching up to cup her jaw, his fingers sliding gently against her skin. She closes her eyes against the way he is looking at her, but she can’t stop herself from leaning into his touch.

She feels him step closer, the warmth of his body surrounding her, but his touch is still cautious and hesitant until she lets her head fall forward to rest in the hollow of his shoulder. It feels comforting and safe in a way she has not known since she left him. In a way she has tried so hard to forget. There is a small part of her that rebels against the urge to sink into his embrace, that beats against the bars in her mind against this kind of surrender, but it is outweighed by her tired heart, so exhausted from denying her need for him for so long.

As she curls her arms around him she can feel the last of the tension in his body ebb away with a slow exhale, his shaky arms holding her close as he rests his head against hers.

“You were right, before,” he murmurs softly. “I didn’t want to know, I didn’t want to believe he did that to you. You were gone and he was all I had, and so I let myself believe that he was still the man who saved me, but he isn’t. I’ve ignored that for so many years, but I need to face it now.”

She can feel his breath hitch where her head rests against his chest as he finally speaks, like the words hurt to say aloud. “After you came back, after you saved me that day with Valiyev, and the things Garrett has said since then...I couldn’t ignore it anymore.”

The silence settles heavily over them, the weight of the truth finally acknowledged. She doesn’t know what to say to him, how to comfort him when she still feels so broken and betrayed herself. Garrett has taken so much from the both of them. In the end she says nothing, just tucks herself tighter into his body.

“I would have come with you,” he whispers against her hair eventually, his voice broken. “If you had told me, if you had asked, I would have left it all behind for you.”

He sounds almost as shocked at his own confession as she feels hearing it. The words rattle through her mind as she pulls back to stare at him, trying to find the lie in his guileless features. His hands slide into her hair, pulling her closer to him again, his forehead resting against her as he whispers against her lips. “I would have chosen you.”

They had only kissed once before, but it’s like he was imprinted in her sense memory, because as his tongue brushes against hers, it tastes like coming home. There is the same desperate neediness from the last time, the same clawing desire she feels to crawl inside him, to be as close to him as she possibly can. Her hands are grasping at his shoulders as she hauls her body up against his, his breath harsh on her lips as they break apart only long enough to breath before diving back into each other again.

She has spent three years building such solid walls around her heart, giving everything she had to  _the mission_  until there was no room for anything else inside of her. No room for wanting. No room for desire. No room for  _love_. And now everything is hitting her at once, all those years of denying herself, of denying him, flooding through her, drowning her. Her fingers clutch at him, dragging through his hair and pulling him closer, her mouth open as she breathes him in. She can feel him trembling under her touch, his breathing ragged as he pulls away just far enough to take a breath. And there is that look in his eyes again, like she has turned his world upside down and suddenly it all makes sense. Like he was lost in the dark until she found him and brought the light back. ( _Like she is the only thing he has ever wanted._ )

His hands are shaking as he brings them up to caress her face, his thumb tracing the curve of her lower lip. There is something so intensely fragile about this moment, she’s afraid to speak, afraid to break the spell. Instead she slides her hands up to mimic his actions, her fingertips sliding across the scar that curves along his cheekbone, remembering that mission and her panic at the thought of losing him when she saw him go down. Moving down to grip the hem of his shirt, she tugs it up and over his head before leaning in to press her lips against the scar on his left shoulder, where she shot him that first night in the alley, before moving further down to the marks along the side of his ribs. That was the time he covered her body with his when the charges they had set went off before they could quite make a clean getaway. The barely visible mark on his hip where a bullet grazed him on that first mission in the hotel with the Russian guards. The jagged line on the inside of his elbow from when his older brother pushed him down the basement stairs and he caught a rusted nail on the way. She kisses each scar, her lips brushing lightly against his skin and causing him to shiver as his hands clench in her hair.

Their bodies are a roadmap of their pasts, every twisted path that brought them here, every bullet they ever took for one another, she thinks as he drags her sweater over her head. He mimics her movements by pressing a kiss against the pale line along her shoulder, a flesh wound from their second field op together, and she can still remember the way she felt as the adrenaline pumped through her as they ran through the jungle to the extraction point. He makes his way down her body, his lips brushing over every one of her wounds until he is on his knees before her. He glances up to meet her eyes before he kisses the scars on her stomach, his gaze so intense she can’t look away. And when he presses his lips to her skin it feels like an oath.

Dropping down to her knees so her face is level with his again, she kisses him hard and messy. All her emotions trying so hard to escape in the only way she can think to express them. Trying to show him just how much she is feeling. He seems taken by surprise by the sheer force of her attack for a split second, before meeting her with equal passion, his mouth coaxing hers open even wider as his kiss deepens. She groans against him, every touch of his tongue on hers sending sparks of heat through her that pool into a steadily growing need between her thighs. She grinds her hips down on him, but through the layers of their jeans she can’t quite get the friction she craves and she whimpers in frustration before he takes pity on her and slides one of his hands between their bodies to pop the button on her jeans and slip inside. She gasps as his fingertips brush over her clit, then further down to dip inside her wetness before moving back to slide slickly over her clit again, tight little circles that have her clutching at his shoulders as sparks flare behind her eyes. She comes ridiculously fast, a sharp and sudden burst that does little more than take the edge off her desire.

Ward shows no sign of slowing down though, tugging her legs to wrap around his waist as he stands before carrying her across the sparsely furnished space to lay her down gently on her narrow bed. She grabs at him as he begins to move away, pulling him back to her to kiss him again, messy and hungry. He laughs against her lips as he pulls away after a long moment, and the sound sends some new sensation shivering through her. She can’t remember when the last time she heard him laugh was. He is grinning as he looks down at her and it feels like something inside her is about to break, about to burst. Some kind of aching joy pulsing through her veins. He leans in to kiss her again, one sharp press of his lips against hers that turns into two, and then three, and then she’s pulling him down into the bed with her, laughing at the completely undignified way he ends up sprawled on top of her. He mock glares at her, opening his mouth to say something but she is already leaning up to capture his mouth with hers again and he ends up groaning against her lips instead.

Skye loses track of time, the rest of the world forgotten as she loses herself in his embrace. His hands are everywhere: tangled in her hair, sliding down to trace the curves of her ribs, cupping her breasts through the thin fabric of her bra, reaching behind her to unhook it before tossing it aside. She moans at the feel of his bare chest pressed against hers, as his mouth moves down her throat, his teeth scraping over her collarbone before his lips close around her nipple.

She is breathless and gasping by the time he pulls away, that cocky smirk she remembers so well plastered across his face, but something more vulnerable hiding just behind it. She wishes she could just reach out and smooth that tension away with her fingertips, but she knows there is so much between them that will take so much more to repair. But this is the beginning. This is something. This is  _real._

She braces herself on her elbows as she leans up to close the distance between him, kisses him with as much sweetness as she can hold, trying to give him a promise of her own. He kisses her back hungrily, desperately. Her hands slide down his sides, and she can’t help her grin as she hits one of his ticklish spots and causes his entire body to twitch. He nips at her lower lip in response, his hips rolling against her and causing her to gasp out loud. Her hands are at the waistband of his jeans now, fumbling with his fly and then pushing them down over his hips, her fingers seeking him out eagerly. He growls, something guttural and primal, as her hand closes around the length of him, pumping him slowly. His face, normally so composed and closed off is completely open to her now, every flicker and gasp for her alone.

She uses her legs to try and shove his jeans the rest of the way down his thighs, groaning in frustration as he pulls away from her to sit on the edge of the bed and untie his boots, slipping them off before tugging his jeans the rest of the way off. He looks back at her over his shoulder, so much heat in his gaze that it makes her breath catch, before he turns to take her boots off for her. He slides them off so gently and then his hands are trailing up her legs to grasp the waistband of her jeans, pulling her underwear down with them and tossing them both to the side carelessly. His fingers brush lightly against her bare thighs, sending a shiver through her as he smirks. When he finally reaches the apex of her thighs, she can’t hold back her groan as he continues with his teasing light touches.

He kisses her when his fingers finally slide inside her, his tongue curling against hers just as his thumb presses against her clit and she gasps into his mouth. Her hands clutch at him desperately as he drinks in her whimpers and moans, his touch sure and steady as the heat builds inside her. His name is on her lips when she falls apart, her chest heaving as she breathes raggedly through the aftershocks.

Ward settles his weight between her thighs, lining himself up at her entrance, sliding against her slick heat until she whimpers needily. But then he pauses, holding himself on his elbows as he hovers above her, barely breathing. The expression on his face is something she could only call reverent.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he murmurs. “I lost you, but you’re here.”

And for the first time she really can see the aching emptiness that her loss left in him. The same hollowness she has felt inside herself all these years.

“I’m here,” she whispers, pulling him down to kiss her. “I’m not leaving again.”

The room echoes with the sounds of their cries and harsh breaths. For just this little while it’s like the world outside doesn’t exist, like they can forget the wolves at their door as they lose themselves in each other. As they find themselves in each other.

Skye wraps her arms around him tight as he falls apart, his face buried in the crook of her neck as he whispers her name like a prayer. As his breathing slowly evens out, his hand slips down between their bodies to where they are still joined, rubbing circles around her clit until she is shaking in his arms, her voice hoarse as she cries his name.

Afterwards as she lays in his arms, basking in the afterglow while his hands trace gentle patterns against her back, she can admit to herself that maybe this is why she really came back. As much as she wanted her revenge on Garrett, to take him down for good, she didn’t need to place herself so close to the action to do it. She came back for Ward, for  _this_. For the chance of it being real.

Her arms tighten around him as the fear of losing him now that she finally has him settles deep.

“You know that Garrett won’t let you go. And he definitely won’t just let us be together.”

“I know,” he murmurs, as his lips brush against her temple.

“So what happens now?” she asks, trying to keep the waver out of her voice as she pulls away from his embrace and sits up in the narrow bed to stare back at him. “I can’t just walk away from this either, Ward. He isn’t running missions that do good anymore, he isn’t doing anything that doesn’t benefit him in some way, to the detriment of everyone else. He needs to be stopped, and I...you’ll be in the middle of all of that, in the middle of us. No matter what happens, there is no way this doesn’t end in disaster.”

Ward holds her gaze steadily as he pushes himself up to sit, reaching out to cup her face in his hands.

“I’ve picked my side Skye,” he presses his lips against hers firmly before pulling back to rest his forehead against hers.

“We’ll do it together,” he promises her. “We’ll burn the whole thing down.”


End file.
